Paris with the lights out

Evi Karkiti, Angelioforos tis Kyriakis, 25 March 2012 It is difficult to find solace within Émile Zola’s literary universe. Believing that the novelist must be a ‘neutral observer and experimenter’, the great French writer expressed the view that literature is a field in need of a rigorous, scientific method, evidently inspired by the scientific developments of his time. Thus he emerged as a leading exponent of naturalism, perhaps the most extreme version of the vast and diverse current of realism, which has gifted European literature with some of its classic masterpieces.Naturalism, having chosen to move, through neutral observation, so close to reality, was criticised for its depressing themes and the suffocating atmosphere of pessimism it created around every story. However, this does not mean that the neutral observer is not also perceptive. Indeed, Zola’s pages clearly capture the harsh reality of the era, the customs and major social problems, the economic impasse, and the multifaceted human drama. These themes lie at the heart of his great and widely read novels. Whilst almost his entire body of novels has been translated into Greek, his short stories and novellas remain virtually unknown to this day. The collection entitled ‘The Marquise’s Shoulders’, recently published in a translation by Phoebus Piombino, not only fills a significant gap but also reveals a different Zola to us: the stylist and master of the short form. With him, the reader begins a wander through a Paris where the lights have gone out and in every alleyway misery meets poverty, despair, and economic, social and moral destitution.  Life as it is: A family dresses up to take to the streets and beg on New Year’s Day, since on that day in Paris begging is tolerated and there is a small hope that the family’s little girl might get a toy. One winter’s day, the author observes the beauty of the snow-covered urban landscape, but also the change in the scene, with mud and dampness running everywhere as soon as the snow melts. A young woman drives her husband to distraction so she can live out her love affair with another man, but her desire proves shallow and fleeting. Two wild animals escape from the Paris Zoo, only to discover that there is no society more unjust and savage than that of humans. Zola’s world is heart-rending. Social injustice, starving, sick children, people who are worse than beasts, killing out of hatred rather than to feed themselves, husbands who love money more than their partner, who dies alone and helpless in a bed. However, nowhere is the human drama of survival portrayed more heart-rendingly than in the short story ‘Unemployment’, characteristic of the author’s method, which culminates in the relentless question posed by the unemployed man’s pale and emaciated daughter: ‘Why, pray, should we go hungry?’ Zola’s approach to the problem of unemployment could make a Marxist blush with rage, as the misery of unemployment strikes both employer and employee alike. Particularly noteworthy is the use of death in the novella ‘How They Die and How They Are Buried in France’, where death—a subject that always preoccupied Zola—becomes the means by which he observes and reveals the mentalities and facets of the society of his time. These short stories reach the reader through the work of a distinguished translator, such as Phoebus Piombino, who ensures an even fuller understanding of this aspect of Zola’s work, by providing extremely useful notes for each story individually. The chronology accompanying the edition brings together the author’s complete works.